


A Home At Last

by StevetheIcecube



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: (sort of), Alternate Universe, Changelings (sort of), Child Neglect, Friendship, Gen, Link and Zelda are children so no smooching, Mute Link, No Spoilers, Sheikah, Sheikah Culture, Sheikah Link, Sheikah Zelda, Sign Language
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-19
Updated: 2017-05-21
Packaged: 2018-10-20 22:22:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10671954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StevetheIcecube/pseuds/StevetheIcecube
Summary: The desert is a dangerous place for children. To improve infant mortality, the Sheikah tribe disguise their children as Hylians and leave them in safer places. Ten years later, Impa came to collect some of these children. She found Link in an orphanage, unable to speak and horribly neglected because he was never understood.She took him home, and now the task begins to help all the children live in the world where they truly belong.





	1. Finding

Looking up at the building, Impa had to wonder if she was in the right place. Everything she knew about the tracking of the child pointed her to here, but this was wrong. Just three weeks ago she'd picked Azel up from one of the nicest houses in Castle Town, but this…the same could not be said about this place.

It was an orphanage. She could tell that much from the words spelt across the top of the door. What she could also see was that it was shabby. All the children there would be poor and there was no way they would have the resources to properly care for a Sheikah child. The only good thing about this place was that it wasn't the home of a child who had been adopted from here. If the child had just been adopted it would have been significantly more difficult to pull them away. 

Impa braced herself for the worst and stepped inside. She was immediately disgusted. Even the hallway was utterly filthy and there were ratty belongings scattered everywhere. She could see six different shoes, but none of them were part of a pair. There were three children in sight, but she could see none of them were the child she was looking for.

“Good afternoon,” she said to a slightly large woman at the desk. As was predictable for common Hylians, she seemed to be afraid. Impa was used to dealing with that and using it to her favour. When the children had learned fear was where the real problem came. It was almost good that Hylians seemed to be incapable of treating Sheikah children properly.

After a few moments, the woman managed to work up a response. “What are you doing here?” She tried to sound upbeat, but Impa knew the woman just wanted her to leave. “We accept donations of rupees and materials, but I'm afraid we don't have any of your kind here.”

“Really?” This was going to be even worse if the poor child didn't know they were Sheikah. It would be rather a shock for them. “I have been informed otherwise. The child is about ten years old and appears to be male.” They never left their babies at orphanages. Something must have gone wrong. 

“We have lots of children here like that,” the woman said. “How do you expect to find the one you're looking for?”

“You know me as part of my people,” she said, “and I know you as part of yours. I am very much able to identify the child, so could you please let me look around so I can find them?”

“Don’t you go and take the children away,” the woman said. “I know what you Sheikah are like. I'll call a member of staff to watch you.” As she spoke, her words were full of venom. Impa tried not to let anger get the better of her, but people like this were so frustrating. The orphanage was clearly stretched to help all the children. One child gone would help them, yet they refused to let said child go to her.

Impa waited for about ten minutes, keeping an eye out for any children who could be the one she was here to collect, but they didn't appear. She could feel the presence of Sheikah magic somewhere in the building, but it was like the camp, just with only a single signal. The child lived here, so their magic was everywhere.

After those ten minutes, the rude desk woman appeared with a much younger and very stressed looking woman. “Good afternoon,” she said, trying to smile at the woman. “I'm looking for a child and I was hoping that once I have an escort you'll let me look.”

“We don't have any Sheikah children here,” the woman said. Then she looked towards the larger woman, who nodded. 

“I already told this young woman that, but she's insistent.” They clearly wanted her to leave, but Impa knew she couldn't. From what she'd seen, the child would have been better off trying to survive as a newborn in the desert. At least she knew they were still alive from the magic signal.

“I know they’re here, so I’d like to look now if you’ll permit me to,” Impa said. She started walking towards the stairs without looking to see if the woman was going to follow. She had no interest in actually following the arbitrary rules these Hylians wanted to give her. After a few moments, though, she could hear the woman following her up the stairs. “I know you claim there are no Sheikah children here, but if you knew there was one, who would you say it would be?”

“I don’t know all the children personally, miss,” the woman said. That meant she had absolutely no idea and was deflecting the question, clearly. “And none of them are…”

Impa sighed. She knew exactly what the woman meant. She received this time after time when looking for the children. “None of them have a skin tone that matches that of the Sheikah,” she said. She didn’t want to listen to this woman fumbling around any longer. “Do you have any idea what would happen if a baby didn’t look like a Hylian? They would be treated differently for their whole life.”

She still remembered, however vaguely, first coming into her true appearance. It had been shocking at the time, but there were very few differences. With the right magic, any child could look Hylian. That was the problem with leaving the children with Hylians, because they didn’t know the needs of Sheikah children, but it was so much safer than taking the babies with them as they travelled in the desert. Since this measure had been introduced, just before she was born, the elders told her that the population of her tribe had more than doubled.

“Oh,” the woman said. She was barely more than a girl and she must be rather scared of her. Impa imagined that her success in her job was probably a condition for board, food, and possibly even pay. She doubted a place like this could pay its employees, though. “I...how would we identify them, then?”

“Sheikah children are completely different to Hylian children,” she said. She was about to explain, but the woman’s eyes suddenly lit up in recognition.

“You’re looking for a little boy of about ten?” She asked. Impa nodded, though she had personal experience pointing to the fact that the child would not necessarily be male. “That’ll be Link then, but I don’t know why you’d want to take him back to your people.”

There was something about the way the woman said it that made Impa very wary about the child she would soon meet. Of course she wanted them. Sheikah children didn’t really fit in with Hylians, but they were meant to be with their own people. “Where would Link be, then?”

“Probably out in the garden at the back,” the girl said. “Really though, you’d be better off looking for a different child. He’s...challenged. We never actually know if he understands us or not, really, and he refuses to play with the other children.”

That was worrying. Normally, Impa had to go at least four times before a child would leave with her, and sometimes she had to visit them or take them away when their parents had no idea she was there. But she never thought she would encounter people who needed children to be taken away but thought she should just take someone else. “He sounds like exactly who I’m looking for. The gardens are down the stairs and through the doors on the other side of the hall, yes?”

The woman nodded, hurriedly following her when Impa turned around. “He doesn’t talk,” she said. “And we don’t think he understands when we speak to him, so you’re better off calling his name from a distance if you want him to come over to you.”

“How long has he been here?” She asked. She imagined it couldn’t have been very long if they had such little idea of how to deal with him.

“Since he was a baby,” she said. “Probably about six months old. I remember when they brought him in, I was only about eight. He’s just very strange and you’ll have a hard job pulling him out of his little dream world.”

Impa was sure this woman had no idea what she was talking about. Poor thing really would have been better risking his life in the desert as a baby if that was all he’d amounted to after ten years of supposed love and care from the people here. “I think I’ll be the judge of that.”

They quickly reached the entrance to the small garden at the back of the house. It was mostly dirt with a tiny patch of grass and about three trees. There were several children sitting around, but Impa could see the Sheikah child, Link, immediately. He stood out like a spot of sunlight amongst the Hylian children.

“It’ll be easiest if you call him from here,” the girl said. “He might come, but I wouldn’t guarantee it. He doesn’t like being touched, but he’ll probably follow you if you ask him to.”

Impa nodded, ignoring the girl and stepping out into the garden. She had the attention of all the children immediately, but none of them approached her. Link’s attention was absent, and he continued to stare and the piece of tree bark he was picking at. Impa closed her eyes for a moment, and she could still see Link. His magical signal was there, and she reached out to it with her own before she called his name. “Hello, Link,” she said quietly, and he looked up at her.

Impa smiled. Blue eyes, very blonde, and very pale. Out of all of the children here, he was the one you’d never think was Sheikah. He smiled back at her, and she could see that he had three teeth missing. “Can you follow me, please?” She beckoned him closer while she spoke the words, first in Sheikah and then Hylian. Teaching him to understand the language would be utterly vital if he couldn’t communicate back.

He hesitated for a moment and then stood up on shaky legs. He was far too small. She’d been able to see before that he was small, but he was small for a Hylian of his age, let alone Sheikah, who were meant to be tall. She imagined him standing next to Azel, who was only a few months older, and she could only frown. They’d considered collecting all the children when a famine hit Central Hyrule a few years ago, so many of those they’d picked up had been malnourished, so this was no surprise, but it still hit her hard every time when she saw it.

Link stumbled over towards her and smiled at her when she smiled at him again. He didn’t seem too out of it, at least not in the way she had been expecting. She encouraged her magic to reach out to him again, and Link’s smile grew brighter. Impa crouched down so she was at about eye level with him and drew her hands towards herself before she spoke. “My name is Impa,” she said in Sheikah and then Hylian, signing it at the same time. “What’s your name?”

This was just a quick test to see if what the woman said was true and he couldn’t speak. The boy shook his head. He clearly knew his name, but Impa didn’t mind. Speaking was fairly unnecessary as a whole, it was just that Hylians put emphasis on it that she couldn’t understand. “Your name is Link,” she said, signing as she went. Link wasn’t a very good Sheikah name, and she was sure his mother had something else in mind, but it worked for now.

Link, of course, caught on immediately to what she wanted him to do. He lifted his hands and managed to spell the L in his name. She smiled at him and repeated the full fingerspelling. Four letters was fairly easy and he got it within a couple of tries, smiling the whole time. Hylians just didn’t know how to treat children properly, honestly. A few moments and a language he could use and Link could already communicate more with her than he seemed to have been able to with these other people who were meant to be looking after him.

When she turned around after telling him again to follow, the girl was staring at them both. “Hello Link!” She said. Her voice was exaggerated to be higher and louder and there was less inflection in her tone. No wonder he struggled to understand them if they all spoke like that to him. Link briefly looked up at her and waved before his eyes dropped back down to his hands. “I’m not sure how you got him to pay attention for so long,” she said.

“Maybe it’s because I know a little more about Sheikah children than you,” she said. She had no patience for these people anymore. They clearly didn’t care about Link and she very much doubted they would resist her taking him away.

“Maybe,” she said. “Are you still sure you want to take him away? Your kind live in the desert, don’t they? He doesn’t like being outside much.”

“He’s not suited to the Hylian climate,” Impa explained. That was one of the bigger physical challenges Sheikah children faced when being raised like this. Hylians always wanted children to be outside so they could be in the sunlight, but all the humidity was wrong and the temperatures were too mild for them. She also didn’t like being referred to as a ‘kind’, but she wasn’t going to pick and choose with language for someone so young. “I trust I can take him with me now?”

“We-we charge fifty rupees if you just want to take a child away,” the girl said. Outside, it said thirty rupees. Impa always brought three hundred with her when collecting a child, just in case, but usually she never had to part with more than fifty.

“It says thirty outside,” she said. The girl nodded.

“But we’ve had him such a long time and he’s not an easy child to take care of,” she said. If Impa handed the money over now, she imagined that the girl would just spend twenty on herself.

“The stables have paid jobs going at the moment,” she said, handing the girl two red rupees. “You can have ten extra because I understand I’m taking him under unusual circumstances. Does he have any personal belongings?”

“Th-thank you!” The girl said, immediately snatching the money out of her hands. “You can take him now, he doesn’t have anything of his own. Take care of him, he’s a fragile little thing. No idea why they named him Link, he can’t even brave the dinner table.”

“That’s just because Hylian food is tasteless,” Impa said, and without a further word to the girl, she motioned to Link again for him to follow her and moved towards the entrance hall again. She was sure he’d be happy to leave this place forever. “Come on Link,” she said once they were outside. Communicating with him was going to be difficult, but she was sure she could manage it. “It’s time to take you home.”


	2. Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Impa takes Link to the Sheikah camp to meet his parents.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the response to the last chapter! I'm hesitantly adding this to the Breath of the Wild category because Purah is in this, but it's still an au and none of the events of the game will happen. The geography of this will also be based on Breath of the Wild because that's the most expansive Hyrule.

The problem Impa hadn’t anticipated with getting Link home to the camp just outside Castle Town was that he probably hadn’t experienced too much yet. He hadn’t had quite the life experience that most other children had with real parents and people who cared about them, and it seemed he couldn’t decide if he was utterly terrified by what he was seeing or infinitely curious. Impa supposed that was a good thing really because he was engaging with his environment, but it made it difficult to get him to follow her through the crowds because she’d been warned that he didn’t like being touched.

At the first point where she could step off the crowded street into an alley, she bent down to look Link in the eye. She could see that it would be very important to engage with him fully when speaking. He was probably quite used to being overlooked. “Are you okay?” She asked, repeating it as usual and signing both times. It took him a few moments, but Link nodded and smiled at her again. He quickly dropped his gaze to the floor before he pushed his right arm in her direction, almost hitting her in the face. She dodged him and then did what he presumably wanted, which was for her to take his hand. She wouldn’t be able to sign to him anymore, but now she knew he wouldn’t get lost.

“Let’s go,” she said, knowing he could probably understand that from just her tone. Eventually she hoped she would be able to switch away from the Hylian language for him entirely, but for now him understanding her was far more important than learning the language of his people.

They walked back into the crowds, and Impa found it was much easier now she could hold onto Link’s hand. His skin was slightly too warm, which was normal for a Sheikah child left with Hylians. Impa looked down at the boy occasionally, wondering if she could present his case to the elders in such a way which would cause them to take more care in where to place the children so something like this didn’t happen again. After all, it wasn’t Link’s inability to speak which was the real problem here, just the lack of care from those looking after him which meant they never formed an alternative method of communication.

There were people staring. That was fairly normal, and Impa was used to it. Sheikah normally didn’t come into Castle Town, and she was also walking with a child who looked Hylian. Maybe she should have removed Link’s disguise while they were in the alleyway, because like this they looked suspicious. When she had stolen a couple of children away from those who had been raising them, she always removed their disguises. Then, even if the children started kicking up a fuss, it looked like just a temper tantrum from a Sheikah child. Like this, she was getting a lot of dirty looks.

“We’re going to just outside of town.” She started talking in Sheikah, and though she knew Link wouldn’t understand, it was important both for keeping up appearances and so he got used to hearing the sound of the language for extended periods. “We have a camp there at the moment because we’re fetching lots of children like you who’ve been living with Hylians for most of their lives.” Link was looking up at her, certainly doing a good job of appearing to understand her.

“There are five of you that we’re getting this year,” she said. She held up her hand with all her fingers up to show him the number. “You’re the fourth one I’ve been to fetch, and I’ll start trying to find the last child tomorrow. There will be three other children at the camp when we get there who are going through exactly the same thing as you, and there are lots of children you can play with and a mother and father who’ve been missing you very much.”

They continued to walk, and now the stares weren’t quite so hostile. Impa was happy to walk at Link’s speed, which wasn’t quite as fast as she liked, but she understood that he wasn’t used to walking long distances. His legs were slightly shaky, but he seemed to be moving as quickly as he could and he showed no signs of stopping or complaining. Other than asking her to hold his hand as they walked, in fact, he hadn’t really done anything. She was glad no one else had realised how willing he was to do anything, because the worst case scenario would have been him being taken away just before she got there.

As they started to reach the outskirts of town, Link started to slow down a little. Before, he’d been staring at everything; all the people, all the buildings, every part of nature that interested him, but now he seemed to be getting tired. It was only about a ten minute walk to the edge of town, but they needed to get there before sunset or the town gates would be closed. If they didn’t hurry, she might have to carry him to the gates, but he was a bit big and she didn’t think the guards would like that.

The problem was that the sun was setting quite quickly now and she needed to get past the walls. She stopped and turned to Link again, attempting to motion what she wanted to do. “I want to lift you onto my shoulders,” she said, signing and then pointing to her shoulders. Link nodded, but he still struggled slightly when she started to lift him. Nothing could be done about that because she really needed to get moving now. “Don’t worry,” she told him, hoping that he understood that he should hold onto her.

They made it to the gates just in time. The soldiers were just about to start closing the gate, but they waited for her to go through. They didn’t even stop her like they had the last few times, which was great because she wanted to get to the camp before the monsters started emerging. There were quite a few established camps and residences outside of the walls, but that didn’t mean it was safe to walk around with a child who wouldn’t be able to fight for himself or call for help.

She bent down to let Link get off her shoulders, which he did gladly. His legs were shaking as he got back on the ground again and he was breathing quite heavily. “Are you okay?” She asked, hoping he recognised the phrase from earlier. She still spoke it in both languages, though. Link nodded again, and within a few moments he was smiling again and he reached out for her hand. She took it and started leading him towards the camp, which was now in sight. She could see the eye of truth on the flag, flying on a banner just outside of the camp. She could see two figures standing at the camp entrance; she couldn’t quite make out who they were, but she would put money on it being Rey and Andat.

As they got closer, Impa could feel Link shaking. It was getting colder, but they were nearly there. She could also hear the stal starting to get ready to burst from the ground. She could hear them clawing at the dirt beneath them, and she imagined Link could too. He was afraid. “Come on,” she said, smiling at him and squeezing his hand. “We’re nearly home.”

He nodded and started to walk a little faster. It was only a little further now, and she could make out the faces of Rey and Andat, just how she had imagined they would be there. There was no one else, which was unusual for an evening, but everyone respected how important this moment was for the pair of them, and for Link. Maybe most of all for Link.

This was the fourth child Impa had brought to waiting parents this month, but she still had no idea how any of them would react to this moment. Her sister had cried (she had cried too, remembering Yeni). Some of the children, obviously not recognising their parents, had refused to go near them because of the reaction. She was fairly sure that Link would not react that way. At least, she hoped he wouldn’t, because she still had someone else’s child sleeping in her hut.

She watched as Rey bent down and opened her arms. “You can go to her,” she told him, and as soon as she said it, Link pulled his hand free of hers and started sprinting towards her. Impa watched with no small sense of satisfaction as the warrior’s eyes lit up and she started smiling.

Link rushed straight into her arms and Impa could only watch as Rey’s arms closed around him in a hug. Link looked so small as he stood there, his face pressed against his mother’s shoulder. At the moment, he didn’t even look like their son, but it was clear that didn’t matter to his parents all that much.

Impa hoped Link understood what was going on. She felt bad because she hadn’t explained it all to him because she had presumed he just couldn’t understand her, but now she could tell that he did understand. At least, every time she had asked him a question or given him an instruction, he had understood.

“Impa!” That was Andat calling her. “Come over here, or you’ll just get swarmed by stal.” He was smiling at her, though she could see he hadn’t taken his eyes off his wife and son. She followed what he said, stepping inside the boundaries for the camp’s rune protection. Once she was next to him, he glanced at Link again. “Is he okay? He looks...did they treat him well?”

Impa shook her head. “Whoever he was sent to decided they didn’t want to or couldn’t look after him,” she said, trying to keep her voice down a little. She didn’t want to ruin this moment for Rey. “I found him in possibly the rattiest orphanage I have ever seen. He’s mute and they didn’t teach him another way to communicate.”

If Andat was surprised, he didn’t show it. “We’ll just have to show him all the more affection then,” he said. Impa just nodded.

“I taught him how to sign his name,” she said. “You should ask him, I think he’ll still remember it.”

Andat nodded and smiled at her again. “Thank you, Impa. I still don’t know how you do it. My Hylian isn’t nearly good enough to do anything like what you do, and so quickly too. We never really thought you’d be back with him within the day.” With that, he went over to Link and crouched down next to him.

Impa watched again as Rey released her son, gently guiding him to stand in front of her so she could see him properly for the first time. Andat smiled at him, and for the first time, they shared a conversation with Link.

“I’m your father,” Andat said, signing as he went. Impa could hear the small crack in his voice (she could never imagine having a meeting like this with a child of her own). “What’s your name?”

Link immediately recognised the signs and words from earlier. ‘My name is Link,’ he signed back, and Impa could see that he was smiling widely. He then pointed to Andat and repeated the sign for father. Andat nodded, and though she couldn’t see his face, Impa knew he was smiling.

Rey caught on quickly, signing to Link that she was his mother while saying the words in Sheikah. She also remembered the word for mother in Hylian, and the moment Link heard it his eyes lit up and he hugged her again.

Impa turned away with a smile. She was sure that Link would be just fine here.


	3. Belonging

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Link spends his first evening in his new home.

The first thing Link noticed was that when he looked into the water he looked different now. He’d been rushing around with his mum and dad and they’d wanted to show him everything in the camp, but it had been getting dark and he was tired, so eventually they stopped. And now they were here, and he looked different.

They took him to their tent first. He hadn’t known the word, but they showed it to him using the new words with the smooth sounds and they used the hand signs that meant he could talk to people (the hand sign for tent was putting both his hands together in a sort of triangle and then moving them apart). They had a bed on the ground with a mat that they slept in together, and Link had a smaller one next to them.

They said that if he wanted something to eat he had to wash his hands first because he’d been in Castle Town all afternoon, and they took him to a bowl with water in it and then he went to wash his hands but he saw himself in the water and he looked different.

As soon as he saw it, he pulled on his mum’s sleeve (he wanted clothes like that, they looked more comfortable than the stuff he got from the older children when they grew up) and pointed to his face. She nodded and said something, but he didn’t really understand. She couldn’t speak the words he understood like Impa could, but he knew she was trying. He couldn’t speak any words at all, so he didn’t mind too much. He just didn’t understand why he looked different. His skin was darker and his eyes were the same colour as these other people, and he didn’t know if it was his skin but his hair looked darker too, and different.

“That’s you,” she managed eventually. He sort of understood those words even in the smooth language, and he understood the hand sign for you. “You...look like me.” She repeated the words in the newer language while doing the hand signs.

Link smiled at her. ‘You are my mum,’ he tried. He wanted to say more, but he didn’t know how to use the word because in this new way of speaking. It felt like not enough, but she smiled even though he’d accidentally flicked water everywhere, including on her face. She definitely didn’t mind, because she hugged him again, which was really nice and he just wanted to stay there. She was real. They’d come back for him, he always knew they would.

“Let’s go to eat,” she said, and this time he recognised the hand signs properly. She took his right hand in hers and lead him over to an area where a whole group of people were sitting around the fire. “Everyone, this is Link, my son.” She’d taught him that word and hand sign earlier (moving his first finger across his chin like he was pointing at something to the left) and it made him so happy. He was her son and she was telling people that. She wasn’t hiding who he was or that he was there.

Then she said something that he didn’t understand, but he could sort of recognise one of the signs because it looked like a motion for speaking. She was signing mostly to him, but he knew the speaking was to other people because he couldn’t understand it. She finished it with some spelling, but all he recognised was the l, i, a and n, there were letters at the beginning that he didn’t understand. The word she said sounded a bit like ‘Hylian’, though, which was one he heard sometimes.

When she was done with talking, everyone was looking at him. It was sort of scary with all those people, but they all looked happy and some of them said hello to him when he sat down. His mum handed him a bowl, which she pointed to, said a word, and then made a hand motion in the shape of the bowl, and then she said another word and made a motion of eating it with a spoon. Then she gave him a spoon and said the word before making the motion without the bowl underneath.

He smiled and repeated the motions to help commit them to memory before starting on the soup. It was saltier than he was expecting and there was far less water than he thought there would be. It was almost too much, having so much to eat. And the bowl was large and the soup was still hot! He’d been expecting it to be cold and it had almost burnt his tongue.

Someone tapped him on the shoulder, and for the first time he noticed the person sitting next to him. He felt a bit silly for not looking before, because they smiled at him and waved. “Can you hear?” They asked in the language he actually understood. He nodded. “So you just don’t speak? I don’t really know much of the hand symbol language yet because I’m still learning Sheikah.”

“Azel, shh,” the person next to them said, and then they added something else he didn’t understand.

“Mum thinks I’m too loud,” they said, clearly ignoring the person sitting on their right. “I’m Zel, or Azel, whichever you like better. I know the sign for that one! My name is Zel.” They said it in the new language, and it was accompanied by the sign he was getting to know very well. The sign was also accompanied by Zel flicking soup off their spoon into his face, but he tried not to show it.

‘My name is Link,’ he signed, and she grinned at him.

“You really can’t talk? That’s kind of cool. It means your mum never has to tell you to be quiet, which is really boring. Mum tells me to be quiet all the time.” The person to the right of Zel huffed, but didn’t say anything more. “Maybe you can teach me the signs for things and I’ll help you learn all the Sheikah words. Sheikah is this language by the way, and we both know Hylian.”

Link nodded, because he didn’t know enough to sign anything to them yet. ‘I’m going to eat my soup,’ he signed, but it was a little simpler than that because he didn’t know how to say he was going to do something. Azel seemed to get the message, and they nodded and turned back to their own food.

“It must be kind of hard if you can’t talk and eat at the same time,” they said. They were speaking with their mouth partly full, and Link watched with amusement as the person sitting next to Zel, presumably their mother, turned to them and said something else about eating. “Mum says I’m not meant to, but my old mum always told me to have manners and I don’t like manners.”

Link nodded again, but he had no idea what they meant. Was he meant to have an old mum too? He didn’t think so, and he’d never had one, so maybe Zel had just been luckier than him. Instead, he started eating again, and it was much cooler this time so he didn’t burn himself. He cupped his hands closely around the bowl, which was still warm, because he was starting to get really cold. It was okay earlier, when his mum was there to hug him, but now she was talking and it was really cold.

“Are you cold?” Azel asked, and then they repeated the question in the new language, Sheikah. He recognised the start of the question. Almost immediately, his mum turned to him, and he nodded again. His mum told him something, and he recognised his name at the end, and then she got up and left the circle, heading into the darkness. “She said she was going to get you something warm to wear,” they said. “I thought you needed new clothes. It gets cold at night.” They repeated themselves in Sheikah. “Does this work? This is how auntie Impa teaches me Sheikah because mum doesn’t know Hylian. She had to translate everything for me at first.”

After a couple of minutes, his mum returned with a cloak thing that looked a lot like what everyone else was wearing. She said something, and he recognised the word cold again. He took the cloak from her, mouthing thank you in Hylian. When he used to do that at the house before, they got annoyed at him, but she smiled, said something else, and made a motion of her hand moving away from her mouth.

“That’s the word and sign for thank you,” Zel said, repeating the words in Sheikah again. “And she told you that this should make you less cold. I have a cloak thing like that, it has a special name in Sheikah.” They said the word, and then his mum signed it for him (she pressed her first two fingertips together and lowered the shape from her chin to her chest) before lifting the cloak over his head.

It was big, and warm, and for a couple of moments he couldn’t see anything. It was black with gold edges, and it covered his whole body and part of the lower half of his face too. His arms were trapped under the cloak until his mum lifted it so he could free his arms again, the cloak moving easily so he could keep most of his arms covered but his hands free so he could eat. “It’s a bit big,” Zel said, and his mum signed it, moving her arms outwards while saying the words.

Link just smiled, signing thank you before turning back to his soup. He was much warmer now, and it was starting to feel like he belonged here. He maybe even had a friend, Zel, and he had food that tasted nice even if he couldn't manage the whole bowl, and he had new clothes that were warm and people who cared about him. 

His mum held his hand and walked him back to the tent. He was tired, but he couldn't stop tipping his head back to watch the sky. There were so many stars, and they were so much brighter than they'd been before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone is interested, the sign language used here is BSL! I had the BSL dictionary open constantly when I wrote this chapter.


	4. Need

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Link wakes up the next day, but settling in isn't as easy as it seems.

For a moment, when he woke up, Link didn’t know what was going on. He didn’t understand why he was warm, why his lungs weren’t filled with the dampness of the room with the ceiling rotting away. He didn’t understand why the blankets were warm and not itchy and why he felt different.

And then he remembered. The woman Impa, who came to where he lived and spoke to him and taught him how to tell people what his name was in a way that people here actually seemed to understand. And then she took him away. And now he was here with real parents who loved him and they’d given him clothes and they fed him and they were teaching him how to communicate. And there was Azel, who was so nice and he’d never actually had a friend before now.

After a few minutes of lying there with his eyes open, uncertain of what he was meant to be doing now, his mum noticed that he was awake. She said something with a bright smile on her face and beckoned him after she was done signing the words. He got up to join her, glancing over at a pile of cloth that had been left at the side of his bed next to his cloak.

His mum spoke again, indicating the pile of cloth. He guessed that she wanted him to put them on, something he’d gladly do. The clothes he was wearing at the moment were handed down by all the people who’d grown out of them, and they were dirty even before he’d walked all the way across Castle Town. Now, they were dirty and dusty and sort of itchy. She spoke the words again, and he imagined they had something to do with putting the clothes on.

Without too much hesitation, he pulled his tunic and trousers off and went straight for the new clothes. They were dark blue and very, very soft, but the tunic didn’t fall very far past his waist. He pulled down on the hem, and his mum laughed. It was a very pretty sound. She said something, and then gestured to the short length of her own tunic. Thinking back to how Impa had been dressed the day before, maybe that was the normal way to dress here. He didn’t exactly see why, but he nodded, and his mum picked up his cloak and lifted it over his head for him.

When she was done, he couldn’t stop himself from going to her and putting his arms around her legs. He wouldn’t have wanted to stop himself even if he could have, because she was wonderful and real and she loved him and she just helped him get dressed and she was so understanding of how he didn’t know exactly what she was saying when she spoke. He loved her.

He looked up at her when she didn’t respond for a moment, suddenly worried that maybe he’d done something wrong. But she was smiling, she just looked sad at the same time. She saw that he’d looked up and then, without warning, she put her arms around him and lifted him off the ground, pulling him close to her chest. She was speaking to him so quickly, but he caught the word ‘son’ in Sheikah that she taught him the night before. He didn’t mind that he didn’t understand, because her words were quiet and happy and she was so warm and being hugged felt so nice.

After a couple of minutes just being held like that, she put him down and took his hand, leading him out to the small pool of water he’d washed his hands in the night before too. There were lots of people around, and he couldn’t recognise any of them now the light was different, but they were all wearing the same kinds of clothes as he was. When he saw himself in the water, he looked completely different.

When he’d washed his hands and face like everyone else did, his mum led him over to the same circle as the night before, but now there was no fire. He looked around for Zel, but they were nowhere to be seen, so he pulled his mum over to Impa instead. She looked down at him when he sat down with a slightly amused smile on her face.

“Good morning, Link,” she said, and when she spoke the Sheikah words he recognised what his mum had said to him when he woke up. “Did you sleep well?”

He nodded, repeating the sign to ask her the question, and Impa laughed. Before answering, she picked up a basket of flat bread that was on her left and handed him a piece. Then, she spoke the word for bread in Sheikah and showed him the sign, which was her moving one hand on top of the other like she was cutting it.

“I slept fine,” she said, “thank you.” Link recognised the sign, realising that maybe he should have thanked her for the bread, so he pointed to it and signed thank you to her. “I heard that you met Zel last night.”

He nodded and smiled. He didn’t know how to ask, but he wanted to know where they were. He wanted to talk to them again, because having a friend was really nice, and he wanted to play with them like he’d seen the other children at the house do with each other. “Zel sleeps a lot,” Impa said with a smile. “They’re probably still in bed at the moment.”

He nodded, trying to commit all the words to memory. It was hard, and every time he thought he remembered a word, he came back to it later and found he had no idea what it was in Sheikah or in the signs. But it didn’t seem to matter too much at the moment, because everyone was being nice to him and they didn’t seem to get bored of trying to talk to him. He couldn’t remember anyone ever being so patient before.

Just before he started eating the bread, his mum called his name. She might have been trying to get his attention before, but he could never tell when people were trying to interact with him because usually they just wanted someone else. She passed him a small bit of cheese, and this time he remembered to sign thank you when she told him the word and showed him the sign, which was one hand upright and the other one twisting a little in the palm.

Link sat quietly for most of the meal, listening and watching as Impa spoke to his mother. He knew that people didn’t always do the hand signs, but Impa was doing them so he could see them. They were speaking in Sheikah, but he tried his best to pick some of it up. Maybe he’d start understanding if he just listened a lot.

When they were done, Impa turned to him again. “I’m going to Castle Town again today,” she said. “But I’ll introduce you to one of my friends first. He’s been helping everyone learn Sheikah properly.” She helped him up off the ground, and he waved goodbye to his mum because she wasn’t coming with them.

Impa took him to a small circle of seats on the ground where a man was waiting with two other children. “Robbie!” She called, and then she turned back to him and signed it. Like the other names, it was spelt letter by letter. The man ran over, and the two children were looking at him too. “Do you want to introduce yourself?”

Link smiled and nodded. He loved being able to tell people about himself. He loved being able to speak, even though it was like this. He waved to the man and then started signing. ‘I’m Link,’ he signed, mouthing the words as he remembered them in Sheikah as he went. ‘I can’t speak,’ he continued, guessing at the sign from the night before.

“Can you hear?” He asked, and he was translating his words into Hylian as he went too, as well as signing. Link nodded. “I’m Robbie, and it’s nice to meet you, Link.” Link smiled at him, and he continued. “I’m here to teach all the new children how to understand Sheikah, but most of them don’t understand sign language yet. You should introduce yourself anyway, though; it’ll be a good lesson.”

Link nodded, looking over at Impa. “I’m leaving now,” she said. “I’ll be back this evening, hopefully with the last child who was left in Castle Town. From there, we’ll probably be on the move fairly quickly. That said, it might take a few days to get them away. I’ll see you later, regardless.”

Link waved goodbye to her before going over to join the two other children and Robbie in a circle. He was suddenly very nervous and he didn’t know why, and he could feel his hands twitching at his sides. “Go on Link,” Robbie said. “You can introduce yourself.”

Link nodded, swallowing down the nervousness that had just come out of nowhere. He didn’t like this, and his hands were now shaking so much that he didn’t think he could introduce himself properly. He lifted his hands, pointed to himself, and then shook his head. He couldn’t make his fingers spell his name anymore.

“There’s no need to be nervous,” Robbie said gently. Link nodded again, but he just moved to sit on one of the seats. He didn’t really want to talk. “But it’s okay if you don’t want to. This is Link, and he can’t speak, so I’m going to start teaching sign language along with our Sheikah lessons. It’s something everyone learns anyway, so it’s good to start early.”

He wanted to go back to his mum and dad. They had come out of nowhere and he thought that was the most important thing to ever happen to him, but now he was scared they didn’t want him. He knew they’d only been gone for a little while and he knew he was meant to learn how to understand them when he spoke, but he didn’t want to just leave them as soon as they found him again.

The problem was that he couldn’t tell Robbie that he wanted to go back to them, because he wanted him to stay. He also couldn’t attract his attention because he wasn’t looking at him, and Link couldn’t make a noise to attract attention.

“Okay you two, can you introduce yourselves to Link?” Robbie asked, pulling him back to reality. The two of them smiled, one of them introducing themselves as Saria and the other as Ilia. He didn’t quite catch which one was which. He felt confused and wrong and this wasn’t helping at all.

‘Mum,’ he signed, trying not to cry. He didn’t know how to sign anything else and he just wanted Robbie to understand. He wanted to go back to them.

“Sorry, Link, could you do that again?” Robbie asked. “I don’t think I caught it all.”

‘Mum,’ he signed, faster this time. He even locked eyes with Robbie for a moment before he had to pull his gaze away. ‘Mum.’

“It’s okay,” he said, lowering his voice a little. “Okay you two, stay here for a bit longer. I’ll be back in a minute, but I’m just taking Link back to his parents.” He reached out for Link’s hand, but he pulled it away. He didn’t want to hold a stranger’s hand. “It’s okay, Link. No need to worry. I understand that you need to go back to them, you only arrived yesterday and I forgot that.” He’d stopped saying anything in Sheikah, and he started walking back over to where he’d left his mum.

‘Thank you,’ he managed to sign. Maybe he’d be able to do it another time, all of this learning, but for now he just wanted to be with his parents. He didn’t want to be discarded again so soon after he’d found somewhere to be happy.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are appreciated :) I LOVE writing things with Sheikah Link and I love making up Sheikah culture stuff. Comments really help with motivation to continue writing, so if you want to see more it's best to just tell me!


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